The term Source Code comes from the world of computer programming and in the world of web pages it refers to the text that contains the content, the embedded formatting and embedded layout information that becomes the viewable web page you see in your web browser. The source code contains the HTML tags used to construct the page in human readable format. The 'source code' for an HTML file is the 'programming code' that produces a web page and consists of HTML, CSS and JavaScript embedded or linked into the page. The web page doesn't display the source code (the HTML), only the page content is actually shown.
You can take a peek at any web page's HTML source code at any time. This is how many people learned to create web pages, by viewing other peoples web pages. The HTML source code is in every web page and every browser will let you see it. If you are trying to learn HTML, one good way is to see how other people do it. The source code for any web page on earth can be seen by doing the following:
Viewing Source Code in Any Web Browser
Right click on a clear space in the page where there are no images, only text with no links and select one of the following:
- Internet Explorer: "View Source"
- Mozilla Firefox: "View Page Source"
- Google Chrome: "View page source"
- Opera: "Source"
- Apple Safari: "View Source"
Many of the latest browser versions now do more than simply show the source code, they will organize the code colorize it to make the HTML tags more visible and show you the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).